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the free-fall

When the Day came –
the Day I had lived and died for –
the Day that is not in any calendar –
clouds heavy with love
showered me with wild abundance.
Inside me, my soul was drenched.
Around me, even the desert grew green.~ Kabir

The day “the Day came” for she-who-scribbles was a far cry from Kabir’s bliss-drenched day; no soul-drenching, no showers of love or abundance, no sense of glorious renewal for her brain. That would all come later, years later. But the catastrophic Day is etched in her memory. There would be no going back. It marked the end of a way of being in the world. Searching for an analogy … she felt like a penny free-falling through a slot machine. (Or a quantum particle sucked into a wormhole!)

Although the free-fall happened instantaneously and spontaneously, there had been ‘stages’ where the penny would, seemingly, land on a level and spin or wobble for some time. The initial tumble occurred some time before the fluid free-fall which these notes attempt to express.

First the penny fell hard onto an existential plateau when she failed to find any argument to refute the fact that nothing whatsoever can be proved to have any existence apart from the sensorial technologies in the body/brain of a sentient creature. (This experiential exploration had been fueled by her studies of Wei Wu Wei’s writings, but they in turn had been preceded by years of inquiry with other teachers – predominantly J Krishnamurti.)

It spun around there awhile, then toppled further when she failed to find evidence of anything other than the functions of consciousness, anywhere.

Eventually it fell clear through the works with the logical conclusion that her own seemingly independent existence, and likewise the existence of all ‘others’ – indeed, the entire field of her experience – could, therefore, be nothing but an arising in consciousness.

These three metaphysical notions had been orbiting her brain for many years, and were understood at some intellectual level. She was quite comfortable with them, but the penny had remained safely in the purse.

Without going into details, the Rubicon had been reached via some pretty difficult times, and ripeness must have been ready. A huge ‘letting-go’ of the old ‘me-mine-myself’ story was called for, and it happened. It happened spontaneously and without volition on her part.

When the penny fell clear through, it took the bottom of her gut with it. She felt like throwing up. She got up from her zafu and said to herself: Well then, old girl, that’s it! No one here. No one to suffer. No one to be depressed. No one to beat up. No one to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone … Haaaaa!

First there was a kind of numbness, shock. A feeling of disorientation. A feeling of falling into an inner vortex. Then, an opening out into unbelievably serene spaciousness. Oceanic.

No sense of a center, and no opacity.

What had happened? It seemed that there had been a brain-leap … yet time and space weren’t involved in any way. It was like an instantaneous interior reorganizing of information. Yet it bears repeating that it had nothing to do with any effort on her part.

The how and the why of it remain a mystery. But many brain files were trashed – she is only aware of this when habit reaches for them and finds them gone; a giddy moment flashes, vanishes.

…

An entity is defined as a thing that has real existence. She thought she was an entity. Doesn’t everyone?

But to be a thing, an object needs a subject to recognize it as a ‘thing’. If one’s an object with real existence, what’s the subject that’s recognizing one?

If one turns around to examine this subject one immediately finds that it has turned into another object being observed, recognized, by the same subject!

If this lunacy stops, what remains?

If one stays still, not moving a millimeter into rationalization or conceptualization, if one tracks that which is believed to be ‘myself’ in its every movement, if one watches that notion of a self with all its ideas, it reveals itself to be – merely another conceptual object.

It is realized that there is only beingness/awareness – unchanging, ubiquitous, knowing no duality, holding no opinions or beliefs, experiencing no emotion – and no independent entity whatsoever to be found.

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8 thoughts on “the free-fall”

Like “a penny free-falling through a slot machine”! Oh, how that describes it for me, too!
One morning this body/form opened its eyes, got out of bed, walked into the kitchen with no-one doing any of it. ‘I’ had vanished. Like a dewdrop melting into the ocean.

It’s delightful to hear from you Diane – thanks for sharing.
The dewdrop melts into the ocean – and the ocean merges into the dewdrop.
This is so wondrous!
I look forward to hearing more from you … ocean-to-ocean
~ miriam

“I” too had the realization of no-self and the free fall of that–though my ‘ordeal” was oddly muted by the circumstance of ‘waking up from the dream of self, while asleep in my bed! Then going back to sleep dreaming of meteors striking the earth and my complete surrender to that inevitable annhilation because there was no where to hide, nowhere to run. The death of self was inevitable. I’ve posted your page to my blogroll. Hope you will come visit me

All eddies in the Oneness, forming, joining, dancing, parting, fading. The play, the dance of it. Emptiness dancing, overflowing, rejoicing in itself. Words point, then fall silent, for they too are eddies. Nameless joy. I Am That.